When the Titanic hit the iceberg on 14th April 1912, J. Bruce Ismay, the ship's owner and inheritor of the White Star fortune, jumped into a lifeboat with the women and children and rowed away to safety. He became the first victim of a press hate campaign, and his reputation never recovered. This enthralling biography, coming in advance of the Titanic centenary, explores reasons behind his jump, his desperate need to make sense of the horror of it all and to find a way of living with lost honour.